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Reasons Why American Job Seekers Are Less Competitive

It’s not simply the economy. There are calculated reasons why some American job seekers are not getting the jobs they want and the pay that they feel they deserve. Many of the reasons for lack of success are deeper than a resume that is not 100% or lack of ability to negotiate salary. It has to do with American society as a whole. Here are some of the variables that make the young American job seeker less competitive by the day:

1. Education – The later they graduate college, the worse their writing skills are. Judging by the hundreds of resumes that come into KAS Placement every day, it seems that poor grammar and a lack of ability to express oneself clearly is not reserved for the graduates of lower-tier schools.

Instead, some of the most reputable colleges are letting students graduate without merit (but, with payment, of course) which is diluting our country’s talent pool. Mainly, this is due to colleges feeling they need to spend tremendous amounts of advertising dollars to compete with online schools, then filling this deficit with students who can barely read, but can definitely pay.

2. Impulsive Behavior – Younger Americans have become more impulsive than ever and seem to need everything right this moment – a characteristic that hinders many upon searching for a job.

When dealing with younger job seekers, our recruiters have more difficulty explaining to them that things may not happen the instant they want them to and not to act on that frustration.

While our recruiting firm explicitly explains to job seekers that their resume submissions will be read, but we can’t contact everybody right away, we still see emails in our inbox demanding that we read a resume submitted three hours ago. These types of actions instantly force our recruiters to blacklist the individual because we can’t have that type of behavior going on with our clients.

Since 2005, the aforemetioned behavior among young job seekers has probably increased about 7 to 8x (this is factoring in increased resume submissions year over year).

3. Loss of Entrepreneurial Spirit – Many of today’s younger generation has just about every technological advantage over the older job seeker, but only a tenth of the research and creativity of job seekers with 5+ years experience.

KAS Placement’s website has a section dedicated to recent college graduates. As a test about a year ago, I switched the tone of the main page telling recent graduates that recruiters could not do everything for them, but instead offered them advice on how to find a great job. Visitors rarely returned and frequently exited the page without visiting these “recommended pages.”

The problem is that young job seekers from overseas are willing to do the research it takes to find the right position, as their custom applications and ways to get in touch with decision makers are more unique than going directly to a website and applying. This is making it very tempting for some companies to start sponsoring young job seekers from the U.K. and Western Europe.

The Positive Takeaway

The positive takeaway for many younger American job seekers is that many companies are not going to sponsor overseas workers, thus the competition for great jobs is going to continue to stay domestic, as it were. If a job seeker begins to seriously look at his or her defaults, a simple correction can spawn a great career.

Ken Sundheim is the Founder and President of KAS Placement Recruiters San Francisco Headhunters a sales and marketing staffing agency that helps both U.S. and International firms recruit all levels of sales and marketing experts throughout the U.S. and Canada.

The staffing professionals at KAS Sales and Marketing Finance Headhunters have been around since 2005.